Shoving his cock down my throat wasn’t hard to do. I was used to it. Jagger, however, wasn’t.
When I swallowed around the head, he gasped. “Fuck, Bailey, this… I’m not gonna last.”
A moment later, he flooded my mouth, and I swallowed what he had to give me. It was powerful to show a man like Jagger how damn good it could feel to finally be with someone who could appreciate him.
Jagger and I sat on his back patio after he made us a delicious meal. He took the dirty dishes into the house and returned with two glasses of whiskey—and the bottle—as we enjoyed the purples and oranges of the sky over the mountains while the sun went to sleep.
I waited for him to ask questions I didn’t want to answer, but for him, I would. I could see that he was itching to know more about that time in my life, so I prepared myself to answer him honestly.
“So, you mentioned you had a story to tell me that would require something stronger than beer. I have the bottle. You ready?”
No. I was never ready to talk about that time in my life. The pain of what had happened would stick with me for the rest of my days.
I sucked down the whiskey in my glass and poured another. “Ask.”
“I overheard Lindsey and Thomas talking about you suffering a huge loss while you were deployed. What happened?”
After a deep breath, I stared into Jagger’s eyes. “Thomas was worried about me leaving the military for the wrong reason, which I told him was because I was tired of the bullshit. He thought I had PTSD and would eat my gun after I was out, so I had to tell him the real reason I was leaving, which was, and still is, top secret. If you tell anyone what I’m about to say, you could be breaking about a dozen laws, including treason.”
“That makes for an exciting future.” Jagger’s crooked smile was becoming my favorite thing.
“Forewarned is forearmed. I had a fuckbuddy arrangement with my commanding officer, Captain Liam McAllistair, but the feelings were one-sided. I was in love with him, and he was in love with advancing his rank, though he did like to fuck.
“We were deployed to Turkey as part of a peacekeeping force. Nusaybin, on the Syrian border. He kept telling me not to get attached because he was a lifer, and we couldn’t be together because it would hinder his promotability. There were no known generals under the rainbow umbrella, according to Liam.”
Taking a sip of my second drink, I thought about all those times I snuck into Liam’s quarters on base just to be near him. He’d also been one to figure out his sexuality later in life, coming down on the bisexual side of things, though he never mentioned any women he was seeing. We weren’t exclusive, at his insistence, and we only saw each other at Fort Carson, where we were stationed.
Jagger reached for the bottle and poured himself another drink. “You don’t have to tell me any more of the story if it’s too upsetting.”
I set my glass on the table. “It’s not as hard as it used to be. We were on patrol along the border, and we’d heard rumors from locals that there was a band of ISIS insurgents inhabiting the border with plans to invade Turkey and take out the peacekeeping forces at Camp Justice, where we were assigned.Of course Liam jumped on the idea of finding them before they found us.
“He asked for volunteers to go on a mission to find the insurgents and hopefully bring them in to turn over to the Turkish government as terrorists. That whole region was a fucking powder keg, not that it isn’t still.
“Our unit was made up of Americans, Canadians, French, and one guy from the UK, all of whom signed up for the mission without hesitation. We geared up and headed out. The ISIS fighters sucked at covering their tracks, but then again, they didn’t plan to return home with the whole suicide-mission attitude. They found our small encampment, and one of them drove a box truck filled with IEDs into the middle of our group and blew up himself and the truck. Liam and four others were killed immediately.”
My throat started to close, so I took another sip. “I’d been with five other guys on the way to where we believed they were encamped. We were planning to capture them after dark, but they weren’t where we thought. It was a miscalculation made by Liam based on faulty intelligence someone higher up the food chain gave him.
“The Army kept it quiet because they said it was an embarrassment to them that one of their captains had gone rogue and led a group of peacekeepers into the mountains on a wild goose chase.
“Liam only had his mother, who he hadn’t spoken to in years, so there was nobody to push for an investigation. Those of us who were on the recon mission were encouraged to keep our mouths shut as to why we were on an unsanctioned operation, or be given a dishonorable discharge.
“I still believe Liam got orders from the colonel in charge of Camp Justice because it wasn’t his style to go off half-cocked on a dangerous endeavor, but nobody was willing to push aninvestigation. Nobody in the upper ranks was ever willing to confess they played a part in the clusterfuck, so all the blame fell on Liam’s shoulders. He wasn’t alive to defend himself, and as much as we tried, it made no difference. And that is why I decided to leave the Army behind.”
I wiped away the lone tear falling down my cheek and sucked down the whiskey.
Chapter Six
Jagger
Bailey sucked down his drink and started to pour another when I touched his hand, taking the bottle from him. “Is that how you medicate yourself so it doesn’t hurt so much?” I poured him another as he wiped away a few more tears.
“Contrary to what that bottle of Jim Beam in my duffel might have signaled, I don’t drink often. Well, no more often than any other soldier with a mild case of PTSD and a slightly broken heart. You?”
I chuckled. “I don’t have a broken heart, per se. Hell, I’m not sure I even have a heart.”
“Maybe you’re ace or pan?” Bailey sat forward, resting his elbows on his knees as he stared at me.
It wasn’t like I hadn’t thought about it—rather stewed on it—for years. I was sexually attracted to men and not women, sothat wiped out both of his suggestions. My problem was I was chickenshit.
